If you've never read the Fallout Bible (pdfs here), I highly recommend it. It's pretty much a giant FAQ about the development of the game done by Chris Avellone, one of the designers of Fallout 3 and the defunct Van Buren (what was supposed to be Fallout 3). Lots of cool bits of trivia and ideas which didn't make it into the game.
Holy god damn Mike Morgan is going to be making the music for this! His soundtracks for Fallout I and II were the most atmospheric and appropriate soundtracks for any games ever.
Is it wrong to make a profit writing software? No. Why? Because there's nothing wrong with accepting money from people who want to pay you.
Is it wrong to believe you're entitled to profit for writing software? Yes. Why? Because software is like fire: no matter how much effort it takes to create it, only one person needs to put in that effort to create it and, after that, anyone can get it for no effort. If you want to ensure you get paid, take payment upfront; don't demand it afterward.
A claim by an AC, about a sister, has no veracity: I can just as easily state this: My sister is a fucking slut. This, despite the fact that I have no sister. See how that works?
Disowning your sister will not make her change her slutty ways.
No, the fed should not be wasting its time on something which should no longer be against the law and should go back to investigating actual crimes which have a negative effect on society.
Maybe we should put a burning cross on his lawn (you know, to represent the 'x' you mark on an election ballot) and paint the word "RIGGER" across his house. That'll show him he's not wanted!
It's funny because it's true (well, for a short while, anyway):
"In 2000, following the second of the two United Alternative conventions, the party voted to dissolve in favour of a new party: the "Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance", a declaration of policy and a new constitution.
...
Media covering the convention quickly pointed out that if one added the word "Party" to the end of the party's name, the resulting initials were "CCRAP" (humorously pronounced "see-crap" or just "crap")... One day later, the party changed its official name to the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance"
I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.
I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.
Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.
Just look at the supermarkets with the self-paying-lines. What I see here is that 1 person can handle 4 lines. That means higher productivity AND 3 others out of a job. All so you can save 2 cents on your frozen pizza that was made in another factory by 1 person pressing a button on a machine
And the supermarket self-checkout machines are manufactures and maintained by, what, magic? These things create jobs as well.
Automation is a huge boon to the productivity of a nation. It increases capital by freeing up workers. This capital, in turn, can be used to start new businesses which hire more workers.
Here's a very simplistic example that illuminates the effects automation: Imagine a population of 100 people living in the wilderness. They all have to eke out a living hoeing farmland by hand to make enough food to eat. Then someone invents an "automatic plow": an ox tied to a piece of metal. Now, all the farms can be tilled by only 20 people, with an additional 10 people whose job it is to raise oxen and manufacture and maintain plows. This leaves 70 people out of work. These people are free to do other things now, like crafting pottery, wickerwork, whatever. In this way -- in the application of technology to reduce work -- a civilization advances.
Let's look at it another way: take the current situation of [non-automated] checkout lines. These jobs already benefit from automation. Take away their cash registers and they have to start writing everything in a ledger. To move the same amount of product, the store had to hire many more cashiers. Hey, at least they have work, right? Let's get rid of automated-stock-boys (i.e. shopping carts) to provide more jobs, while we're at it.
The problem is not that automation is getting rid of jobs; it's that the people benefiting from automation are not (in general) reinvesting enough of that capital back into the economy by means of creating new businesses and industries. They're simply sitting on billions and billions and billions of dollars, effectively taking them out of the economy by not spending them.
A friend of mine has a cheap mp3 player that he bought a couple of years ago. He flashed it with Rockbox and has had his battery life more than quadrupled!
I don't know why companies are so loathe to take advantage of free software like Rockbox and, instead, insist on writing their own, lousy firmware. There are people out there who will do it better, and for free!
Just imagine how much better things could be if closed source software were outlawed...
The only thing politicians value more than money is their own life. As terrible as it is to consider, this is really the only avenue to effect change that the electorate has.
So basically, you're saying "It's different, therefore I find it scary and view it with suspicion."
Yeah, great. That mindset has served mankind very well over the years
Yes, the concept of "being careful" has absolutely served mankind very well over the years. Without that mindset, we wouldn't be dominating the planet today; some previously unknown threat would have killed us off very early in our evolution.
Imagine if there were *no* laws against copying someone else's work - say anyone could legally copy a studio's movie print and show it in their own theater, or copy DVDs, CDs, or books and sell them in a retail store along side the "official" copies, etc.
So what if one company's software got "ripped off" by another company? That's a good thing; it promotes competition between the two companies to create a better version of the game.
With much of the web upset over about Google's latest privacy policy changes, it's helpful to remember it could be much worse
Helpful in what way? In an "sure, our president (for example) is doing something very bad, but it's helpful to remember a worse leader in history: Hitler" sort of way?
Slashdot Mirror
If you've never read the Fallout Bible (pdfs here), I highly recommend it. It's pretty much a giant FAQ about the development of the game done by Chris Avellone, one of the designers of Fallout 3 and the defunct Van Buren (what was supposed to be Fallout 3). Lots of cool bits of trivia and ideas which didn't make it into the game.
Holy god damn Mike Morgan is going to be making the music for this! His soundtracks for Fallout I and II were the most atmospheric and appropriate soundtracks for any games ever.
We would have had to have caught JFK's killer in order to get that photo, though.
You're missing the fact that the CRTC is a captured regulator.
Is it wrong to make a profit writing software? No. Why? Because there's nothing wrong with accepting money from people who want to pay you.
Is it wrong to believe you're entitled to profit for writing software? Yes. Why? Because software is like fire: no matter how much effort it takes to create it, only one person needs to put in that effort to create it and, after that, anyone can get it for no effort. If you want to ensure you get paid, take payment upfront; don't demand it afterward.
Disowning your sister will not make her change her slutty ways.
False advertising should really be illegal.
No, the fed should not be wasting its time on something which should no longer be against the law and should go back to investigating actual crimes which have a negative effect on society.
Maybe we should put a burning cross on his lawn (you know, to represent the 'x' you mark on an election ballot) and paint the word "RIGGER" across his house. That'll show him he's not wanted!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCRAP#Background
That's neat and all, but can it read my midichlorian count?
I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.
I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.
Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.
Citation?
Somewhere between zero and the temperature (in Kelvin) at which Hell freezes over.
And the supermarket self-checkout machines are manufactures and maintained by, what, magic? These things create jobs as well.
Automation is a huge boon to the productivity of a nation. It increases capital by freeing up workers. This capital, in turn, can be used to start new businesses which hire more workers.
Here's a very simplistic example that illuminates the effects automation: Imagine a population of 100 people living in the wilderness. They all have to eke out a living hoeing farmland by hand to make enough food to eat. Then someone invents an "automatic plow": an ox tied to a piece of metal. Now, all the farms can be tilled by only 20 people, with an additional 10 people whose job it is to raise oxen and manufacture and maintain plows. This leaves 70 people out of work. These people are free to do other things now, like crafting pottery, wickerwork, whatever. In this way -- in the application of technology to reduce work -- a civilization advances.
Let's look at it another way: take the current situation of [non-automated] checkout lines. These jobs already benefit from automation. Take away their cash registers and they have to start writing everything in a ledger. To move the same amount of product, the store had to hire many more cashiers. Hey, at least they have work, right? Let's get rid of automated-stock-boys (i.e. shopping carts) to provide more jobs, while we're at it.
The problem is not that automation is getting rid of jobs; it's that the people benefiting from automation are not (in general) reinvesting enough of that capital back into the economy by means of creating new businesses and industries. They're simply sitting on billions and billions and billions of dollars, effectively taking them out of the economy by not spending them.
I'm pretty sure you go on to the lightning round -- or "blitzwenden" -- in that case.
Or it could be the "innocent typo" spelling...
(geez..+5 Insightful?!?)
The outcome of this lawsuit is somewhat akin to the actual presidential race itself: whoever wins, we lose.
A friend of mine has a cheap mp3 player that he bought a couple of years ago. He flashed it with Rockbox and has had his battery life more than quadrupled!
I don't know why companies are so loathe to take advantage of free software like Rockbox and, instead, insist on writing their own, lousy firmware. There are people out there who will do it better, and for free!
Just imagine how much better things could be if closed source software were outlawed...
The only thing politicians value more than money is their own life. As terrible as it is to consider, this is really the only avenue to effect change that the electorate has.
Yes, the concept of "being careful" has absolutely served mankind very well over the years. Without that mindset, we wouldn't be dominating the planet today; some previously unknown threat would have killed us off very early in our evolution.
That would be absolutely wonderful!
So what if one company's software got "ripped off" by another company? That's a good thing; it promotes competition between the two companies to create a better version of the game.
Hmmm... What if you attached the whole thing to another helium balloon?
Helpful in what way? In an "sure, our president (for example) is doing something very bad, but it's helpful to remember a worse leader in history: Hitler" sort of way?